The U.S. government, which is usually very slow to adopt new technologies, signed an agreement recently to move much of the Department of Defense to Windows 8. The three-year, $617 million deal for up to two million seats is a good proxy for where American business users are headed. Or is it? Microsoft of course hopes it is, but I think that’s far from a sure thing.

This isn’t just trading Windows XP for Windows 8. The U.S. Navy, which isn’t (yet) included in this deal, only recently signed their own agreement with Microsoft to take the fleet to Windows 7. But Windows 8, being touch enabled and running all the way from smart phones to super-clusters, is something more. It represents the U.S. government’s best guess as to how it will embrace mobile.

You can read the announcement here. Access to all Microsoft products, blah, blah, blah, but what stands out is the continual use of the term “mobile.” This is new.

Here is how this revolution is going to play out according to my friends who watch this stuff all day every day. Microsoft has a long relationship with the government as a trusted vendor that will do what it takes to make its products secure. Microsoft has had FIPS 140-2 certification for RSA and AES since Windows 7. The Windows 8 you and I get with out HP or Dell PC doesn’t include the special security stack that will come with these new government PCs. So Windows, however pedestrian, is viewed by the government as good from a security standpoint.

Android, Linux, and to some extent OS X, are viewed as bad.

IOS, while just as bad as OS X in the view of internal government experts, is in a different category because of internal politics. If you combine phones and tablets IOS is the number one platform in both market share and customer satisfaction. That means if the general loves his iPhone he’ll get to keep his iPhone. Same, probably, for Blackberry. Look for the military Windows environment of the future, then, to allow the use of these devices in an otherwise Microsoft-centric world.

Traditional PCs play a relatively minor role in this emerging view of military computing with the most common device being a tablet or a smart phone. The military, which has been playing with Windows-based tablets for months, really likes them but hardly anyone else does.

Where a traditional desktop is required it will be with the use of Windows-to-Go (WTG), a USB keychain drive that carries a complete personalized Windows desktop. Every soldier and civilian DoD employee will have his or her personal WTG thumb drive. Desktop PCs will be effectively blank and shared by anyone who is allowed in the room.

What enables WTG is Bitlocker, which is FIPS 140-2 certified. Kingston, Spyrus, and Imation all have workspace USB drives. These and Clover Trail tablets from Intel are viewed as the game changers.

Now this view of the future is very hopeful for Microsoft, but how likely is to to either succeed or become an archetype for non-military organizations?

I’m not sure many non-military organizations will embrace WTG. It makes sense from both a security and an efficient hardware utilization standpoint, but other than consulting companies I don’t see private employees wandering deskless through their workdays.

I see, too, a possible source of delusion here for Microsoft. Redmond just announced that it has 20 million Win8 users, for example, but how many of those are from this DoD contract? That number could be up to two million yet not a single Win8 copy has yet been shipped under the contract. And those rave tablet reviews coming-in from the front lines, those are compared to what?

If there’s a big picture here I think it has been missed by the military itself. That big picture says that CPUs have reached the price point where we can all afford several of them. The new soldier with his smart phone, tablet, and WTG key will be traveling with at least three microprocessors where they had before at most one.

Soon everything will have a CPU and each soldier will be a LAN of one. In this regard I think the emerging military situation mirrors private industry. But to say that Microsoft will inevitably sit in the center of all that action may just be a lot of wishful thinking on teh Pentagon’s (and Redmond’s) part.

61 Comments

This is, as always Bob, an interesting article and piece of news. Mobile is “the future” but like you, I don’t see Microsoft owning the space. iOS and Android have and will continue to grow both in terms of marketshare and capabilities. The consumer use of mobile devices and “social media” will continue to flow upstream to business and government.

The most exciting days are ahead of us for sure as traditional media consumption moves to the new platforms and new solutions are created for the challenges of tomorrow!

are you more secure now than 4 (8,12, 16, etc.) years ago under General Clippy?

Joe
January 11, 2013 at 2:28 pm

There are indeed non-military applications. When I was a paralegal in a large national firm, we often wandered through the building on various projects, and even other cities. Our network was configured to locally load your settings and files, and this was 10 years ago. It was so slow the first time you used a new machine, however, you avoided moving whenever possible, with obvious hits to efficiency. If this can do that with speed, and without clogging machines with multiple profiles, it’s a big deal.

Gary Urista
January 11, 2013 at 4:23 pm

I hear about what the future of computing is supposed to be and how desktop computers and periferals like mice will soon be part of history and it scares the shit out of me. People whose most technical use of the computer is doing facebook will decide that tablets and smart phone are ALL we need? I write software and do CAD. Using your finger instead of a mose is like finger painting. A mouse can point at a pixel on my display. My finger has a half inc diameter. It points at a hell of a lot of pixels at the same time and typing on a touuch screen is not “just as good as a keyboard”! The new way is not always better.

Art
January 12, 2013 at 1:14 am

I quite agree. It seems that while everyone is getting carried away with turning computers into mass market toys, serious computer users, many of whom don’t need mobile facilities, are being forgotten about. What the military want hardly seems relevant. I’m sure they would be just as happy if Microsoft offered them a gun with built in ‘phone and touchscreen.

Technologically it should be possible to build a “desktop” environment with large screen, precision pointing device (mouse) and precision typing device (physical keyboard) around a mobile device. But why go to that expense and throw away existing, and perfectly usable, technology?

It seems we badly need to stop treating computers as fashion items and to remember how important they are as general purpose tools.

Steve Job’s car-truck analogy still makes sense. Programmers, developers, technical professionals will continue to use mice and keyboards, but simpler tasks can be handled by a less complex device like a tablet or phone. A device like the Galaxy Note even restores some of the precision of a mouse by including a stylus.

When I was starting out, they said “no one ever got fired for buying IBM” for the last couple of decades Microsoft has been substituted for IBM.

its a safe unimaginative bet, they same kind big business makes every day.

Kevin Kunreuther
January 12, 2013 at 1:17 am

You still can’t get fired for buying IBM, in fact you’d probably get a a raise and promotion for doing that … OTOH, if you hire IBM, your name will soon be MUD.

Simon Hibbs
January 11, 2013 at 4:48 pm

The problem Microsoft has I. The consumer mobile space is they don’t have enough market share for their device/accessory/application ecosystem to be self sustaining lay profitable. Their technology isn’t the best, but that’s not really the problem. If Surface and Metro had come out before the iPad we’d be in a different world.

The US government and military is in a different situation because they are so big they can create a self sustaining device, app and services ecosystem essentially with a single policy decision. So for all that I love my iOS devices and despair at Microsofts clumsy atttempts to catch up, I think it may well be that they have a lineup of products that, finally, and only just barely, are good enough to make a project like this not only viable but perhaps even well suited to the task.

Anthony
January 11, 2013 at 5:12 pm

I work at a rather dull-witted community bank that utilizes the Windows operating systems, including the Office suite, yet provides senior managers and executives with iPads for thier upper echelon (?) meetings. Employees can tele-commute by installing virtualization software on their personal computers. (Why does my employer get to benefit from my hardware?) that allow us to access our work desktop after authentication via an RSA/random numbers generator. I won’t to into detail for fear of putting readers to sleep.

It may be “secure” against someone else’s use, but you’re still locked out of the system. To get back in and retrieve your identity means you have to have a cloud and server farm somewhere. What’s running on those servers? How much has the military really embraced Windows?

The WTG thumbdrive and laptop and smartphone is a genuflect to the model of thin client computing. With thin clients frankly the clients don’t matter much, all power to the server. This means the trend will be towards client-agnostic software that can run across multiple devices. It also means that clients will become more interchangeable.

I think businesses _are_ adopting this model and Google loves it. Microsoft is fighting the last tech war while Google is winning the current one.

It can sync data with a “cloud” (server), but the software is on the USB drive – sounds like full fat to me. If it was ChromeBook-to-Go (CBTG?), or a barebones Citrix client setup (can be done with minimal Linux), that would be more like a thin client.

YMMV

another matt
January 11, 2013 at 10:15 pm

it’s thin in the sense pointed to in the first line of John’s post, “what happens when you lose it?”

For it to have any degree of security, the smaller-than-your-hand hardware yet as-big-as-your-desktop software-wise device must be continually and consistently backed up “somewhere”, so that losing the device is (relatively) inconsequential.

It’s the cost (in terms of time & difficulty) of replacement that is being called “thin” here.

Snarkus
January 11, 2013 at 5:31 pm

so the US military has bought the sales weasel as manager view and wound up with networked computing where Sun was back in oh, say, 1990 ? Hot desking and all ? Mobile has a place, a small one, for most work situations. I can see front line units like ships crew using WTG. Not sure about land establishments benefitting because not that many visiting staff wander thru site administration, logistics or operations areas. Since much of military software is not off the shelf outside the clerks areas I don’t see how MS fit in better than any other mobile device and software stack

I think you’re right. I used to run a SunRay “ultra-thin client” network in a university, Sun’s people clearly thought it was the future (and apparently used them internally) but it never caught on. Maybe WTG solves some of the problems but it’s still asking CIOs to make a huge conceptual leap; something executives in large organisations rarely do.

Reinier
January 11, 2013 at 6:37 pm

Microsoft sold 60 million licenses of Windows 8, not 20 million. And that number excludes volume deals like this one.

gymbo
January 11, 2013 at 6:43 pm

How is Linux bad from a security standpoint? Putin threw down with Ubuntu. If anyone knows about computer security surely the Russians do. Oh well, who cares about $617 million?

Jonathan
January 12, 2013 at 4:22 pm

At this scale, strategic alliances are about companies, not products. In America, socialism as a public good = bad, socialism as a positional good = good.

John
January 11, 2013 at 9:02 pm

Microsoft has had FIPS 140-2 certification for RSA and AES since Windows 7. The Windows 8 you and I get with out HP or Dell PC doesn’t include the special security stack that will come with these new government PCs.

That’s incorrect. FIPS-140-2 mode is not just restricted to some mythical “government release” of windows. The government gets the same Windows that everyone else does, which means that everyone can turn on FIPS mode, not that they do. You usually only see FIPS compliance mode turned on in financial institutions in the private sector and primarily for various regulatory compliance reasons.

TemporalBeing
January 17, 2013 at 6:02 pm

True, FIPS is available to everyone. However, to secure Windows the government does have a special “gold disk” that gets run to set policy, etc. to put Windows into an ultra secure mode. AFAIK, you can’t get that disk as an average person or Windows users.

Ron Cerrato
January 18, 2013 at 4:02 pm

If I wanted to try FIPS I would just google “FIPS Windows 8” to learn what it’s good for and how to set it up. No “gold disk” required, unless my purpose was to snoop on the government. For example: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/811833

Jerry
January 12, 2013 at 12:44 am

Microsoft may well end up sitting in the center of the military-technology action, but what might that do to the rest of their business? How much is the military going to spend on them year after year? If it is a lot, it might end up helping Microsoft to shrink, especially if they get distracted by that and fail to realize the rest of the consumer spending has plodded off in a different direction. It also may be that in order to get these purchases/contracts, Microsoft may have had to agree to support whatever it is they sell for a long period–this is what they already have to do. But it is yet another thing that keeps the elephant from turning quickly when the market indicates a new opportunity.

In the long run, I doubt this will reflect much on the non-military success of Windows 8 and/or its tablets.

Anders
January 12, 2013 at 12:51 am

> Desktop PCs will be effectively blank and shared by anyone who is allowed in the room.
The problem is that the users have to trust that the desktops are non-compromised. This means that only desktop PCs owned and maintained by the company, not the one “in the local coffee shop” can be used. This means that walking around with your data on an USB key won’t buy you anything that you couldn’t get with an old-facioned roaming profile or a thin client (traditional or web based), if you had a network connection.

> how likely is to to either succeed or become an archetype for non-military organizations?
The military is probably one of very few places that can’t or won’t guarantee a reliable network connection to every one of its desktop PCs, so few, if anybody, will have any use for it.

Nigel
January 12, 2013 at 2:39 am

The trouble with all this mobile USB key malarky, with anything mobile, is that security is going to be a minefield (not literally, metaphorically) and the reason is simple. It’s not encryption, it’s human fallibility. People will lose the devices; they will leave them in the cab, on the train, on top of the filing cabinet when they go for a coffee refill. The standard of data protection may be unbreakable but that doesn’t stop the actual data being lost.

When that happens, yes, there will be a lot of internal audits, a lot of finger wagging, but it doesn’t remove the human element.

At least with a “old fashioned” desktop or console there is a level of greater physical security.

JimBob
January 12, 2013 at 7:37 am

I wonder if the military can convince MS to add a Start Button to Windows 8?

[…] X. Cringely wrote about Vista 8 this weekend. It seems like Microsoft is not part of the future; so we need to focus on […]

Neticis
January 12, 2013 at 11:13 am

I suppose that only reason, why U.S. government signed an agreement to move to Windows 8 (and not Linux or any other Unix), is because as you said — it “..is usually very slow to adopt new technologies..”

TemporalBeing
January 17, 2013 at 6:05 pm

U.S. Gov’t uses a lot of Linux, probably more than Windows in the end. Win8 won’t change that. Windows is usually just the end-user interface for desk-people; most everything else runs Linux or another trusted OS.

Metalman
January 12, 2013 at 1:43 pm

I’d bet money that some consultant for Gartner will latch onto this as a new trend.

Bill H
January 12, 2013 at 4:00 pm

That will surely simplify questioning of any soldier captured: What is your Name, Rank, Serial number, and Login?

ronald
January 12, 2013 at 4:38 pm

Windows is the equivalent of shock and awe based on tanks and old dumb planes. While the future is about smart weapons. I don’t think we are there yet, iOS and Android are more like primitive IEDs but already successful against an old army.

Wilson Zorn
January 12, 2013 at 10:33 pm

While I also have my doubts as to MS’ approach and specifically they as “the” vendor for these services in general, I think that this article minimizes far too much and unfairly the need for office workers to use a “mobile desktop.” With so many of us working part-time from home, it would be nice to have a corporate solution that easily supports this as we go in and out and work in multiple locations

Smarty Pants
January 13, 2013 at 6:40 am

I work on site at military facility. There is NO WAY that the security people over there will allow this. USB sticks are already banned, even on unclassified systems. The security risk is too high, even with encryption. I can just picture all the Chinese agents hanging out at the local Panera Bread, trying to pick up a lost USB stick.

Ronc
January 13, 2013 at 2:55 pm

You bring up an excellent point. The announcement Bob linked to in the column does indeed reference “mobile” about 5 times. But there is nothing in that announcement that implies that WTG is the reason Windows 8 was chosen. It may be for the same reasons that Windows continues to have 95% market share worldwide. I suspect it’s a combination of factors including mobility (similar interface for tablets, phones, and desktop), the new feature that allows you to “start over” easily, legacy support, and cost (including whatever specific support the “deal” includes). What other company could be believed if they “promised” to “support” all government computing devices?

TemporalBeing
January 17, 2013 at 6:07 pm

Or it may simply be a quick path to Windows Blue, which is more of a rolling release. A much more likely reason.

DoD Contractor
January 14, 2013 at 10:53 am

Indeed, USB of ANY kind is banned at our facility as well. USB ports are either physically locked or filled with epoxy so that they cannot be used. I see very little chance of that policy changing any time soon.

Francis
January 13, 2013 at 8:30 am

Why is that USB key needed at all? The network is the computer. Ok put a secure chip on the dongle, but those things can be stolen can’t they? Better to store all the users files securely on the network and authenticate the use by retina scan or some other biometric, or perhaps several of them.

I was thinking that the USB key might have the fingerprint reader along the side…

GeorgeV
January 13, 2013 at 12:35 pm

That WTG thing has existed since a decade ago on Linux. And there are Linux distros that are a LOT more secure, and even anonymized completely. It’s just that they might not be “certified”. It’s also odd that no Linux vendor has that kind of security. Have you actually researched into that? I haven’t but you’re the one who wrote the article.

In the end I think it’s quite obvious that Microsoft’s past relationship with the government, and their lobbyists played a MUCH larger role in getting this contract than any single technical feature Windows 8 might have. Even if it had none of those “benefits” that you mentioned in this article, DoD would’ve still signed the contract with Microsoft. So let’s not be naive here. Which means that this also proves nothing about Windows 8’s future.

And btw, I’ve heard several people working there that DoD is actually one of those agencies that tries to stay up to date with software, unlike other government agencies. Probably because they deal with a lot of classified stuff. So again, I wouldn’t attribute this to Windows 8 being awesome or anything. It’s just newer and perhaps a bit more secure than Windows 7, so they upgraded to it. It has nothing to do with wanting to use Metro or Windows phones (which don’t even use the same apps anyway).

TemporalBeing
January 17, 2013 at 6:09 pm

FYI – two Linux Distros (Red Hat and SuSE) have received the highest security grades allowed for commercial software. The only other operating system to receive that is Trust Solaris. Windows doesn’t make the list, it’s down around EAL 3 or 4.

So Linux can go a lot of places in government that Windows simply cannot. Windows 8 isn’t going to change that – nor it’s follow-on – Windows Blue.

paul
January 13, 2013 at 7:20 pm

I don’t think this game will mature until the vocabulary changes. While we think “mobile” or, prsumably, non-mobile (i.e. desktop), we bias all the thinking and people take sides, they’re forced to. In reality, what we should be aiming for is “work anwhere”, which EQALLY relates to mobile and non-mobile needs. Thus we should be taking about “ANYWHERE”, NOT “mobile”.

Once the vocabulary changes, the future can be clearer because people can more easily express unbiased views. For now, people supporting mobile futures are not obliged to consider fixed-location needs and clearly the same is true for vice-versa. What EVERYONE needs is technology that doesn’t care where we are or for how long. We still don’t have that!

Allan
January 14, 2013 at 11:23 am

I’m strongly reminded of the days when the DOD mandated “Ada” for all military applications. By the time they got Ada up and running and enough people trained, ‘C’ had become the preferred language for applications. So after about 3 years of suppliers and contractors complaining, DOD dropped the requirement for Ada and accepted ‘C’. So sure, the military would love to standardize on something that works. And when they make a mis-step, it can be an enormous mis-step. But just as they dropped Ada, they can reverse themselves on Windows-8 pretty quickly if it does not serve their purposes.

I think you might be reaching a bit here Bob. “Mobile” is only mentioned in one paragraph, and heck, I remember a lot of mobile computing hardware from the military trade show I attended almost 20 years ago. It’s a well-loved buzz word, I wouldn’t get too excited about it showing up in a press release. I’m having a hard time believing the army wants all its personnel carrying their computers in their pocket. But I’ve been wrong before.

Michael X Foster
January 15, 2013 at 2:47 am

Which platforms the military adopts will depend a lot on which platforms the military’s defence research contractors deliver techonology to them on.

Barney Fyfe
January 15, 2013 at 6:50 am

All of this seems narrow minded and windows focused. Even at IBM we are told not to use a USB unless it is purchased by IBM Internal and then handed to you. As a new rule – they don’t want employees purchasing any hardware on their own and using it on their company equiptment. USB key is the easiest and most portable way to distribute nasty stuff. AND, with Windows being the premier choice of hackers transmitting the flu (simply due to market share) why are companies so hung up on using Windows? There are ways to encrypt your hard drive (PGP and others) but that doesn’t stop you from contracting a virus, trojan, or whatever.

I have never been impressed with iAntyhing and don’t own any of it. I am a windows user but my next machine (which I just purchased) will be running a linux based system. Free, support, and FAST!!! Linux has come a long way and the GUI front ends has removed much of the need to learn bottom line commands. Even linux bundles include all the things you need to have a complete workstation. Now, with that said, some apps I am sure won’t work but there are usually work arounds for them.

I’m not sure that this plan will work for the military as it’s described.

While consulting for a pharmaceutical company about six years ago, I was required to sign all types of non-disclosure and other contracts. Using USB thumb drives was punishable by immediate dismissal.

Ronc
January 21, 2013 at 5:01 pm

Keep in mind, the announcement had to do with using Windows 8, not necessarily the WTG feature, or any feature using external portable drives.

Bazz
January 29, 2013 at 5:00 pm

If what you say is true in the security area, against my hate of the evil empire I think Redmond has a winner.

But some doubts!

In my view of the “Anonymous Hacking” kerfuffle some years ago I saw a hutzpa in the defense industry that had lots of ‘off the shelf’ Microsoft vulnerabilities that they could use at will against others. This is delusional – all vulnerabilities are vulnerabilities to even yourself even if you know of them. And these experts were hacked! What does that say of their expertize?

The other is typical military shortcuts. In the preparations to kill Usama Bin the military failed to build a duplicate roof of his house – well that ignorant act lead to lack of lift and the destruction of a $50 million plus machine and China’s gain in studying the wreck!

CCCP believed in “one off” security yet Win8 has to be secure for the top brass and the grunts. Wikileaks shows you can’t trust grunts. And Spies in the FBI / CIA show you can’t trust top brass.
My favorite story is Kim Philby wrote the text book spy manual for UK and CCCP!

China has savants that can think of access to OS systems from first principles.

SR71 Blackbirds have no blue prints because USA said that they if they existed would be vulnerable to access and theft.

The same I understand for the priming mechanism of all USA nuclear weapons. When the ‘use by date’ happens USA may have no usable nuclear weapons!!

But today USA Military believes differently and will allow USA’s future to be in the hands of a known greedy criminal group.

Oh that’s how America operates now in every sphere. Have partnerships with Criminals. Let Criminals run the state.

THe easy solution is the US military design their own OS. The beauty is its not compatable with anything, in house and safe as houses.Oh and they save money!
If Linus Torvalds can — how dumb is the USA Military!!

It’s perfect time to make a few plans for the future
and it’s time to be happy. I’ve read this post and if I may I wish to counsel you some attention-grabbing things or advice.
Perhaps you can write next articles relating to this article.
I desire to learn more things approximately
it!